A question of conservation and quick augmentation

Filipinos have not worried enough about conserving the resources they regularly use and often put at risk.

The material resources of this country are in a terrible condition. The land has been depleted of its productivity, the forests shorn of its cover and the seas, rivers and streams mostly overfished and polluted. Even the air has not been spared and its toxicity now condemns an unprecedented number of people to suffer various respiratory ailments.

A quarter of a century ago, a score of hopeful young academics assessed that country’s natural resources and, plotting historical trends, prognosticated their probable condition by the year 2000. Reporting their findings to the authorities, the academics were rebuked for being "alarmists". The highest public officials no less scoffed at the group’s futurist scenarios and declared them to be "either wrong or dead wrong."

In the midst of martial law Philippines, the young researchers prudentially allowed for the fallibility of academic studies but nevertheless continued to disseminate their cautionary findings. Unfortunately, the authorities rather than the academics turned out to be right. When 2000 came, practically all of the latter’s scenarios turned out to be gross underestimations of the actual plunder of vital natural resources and the public’s level of demand for them.

The situation as regard the material resources of the country is bad enough but the problem of resource conservation and its conscientious augmentation is worse when it comes to specifically human resources.

Whether one speaks of quality parents, dedicated teachers, prideful workers, competitive entrepreneurs or patriotic leaders, one has to acknowledge the currently criminal state Filipinos find themselves in.

Streetchildren roam the republic by the thousands and millions more of the very young make do with substandard parenting. Poverty drives most father and mothers to seek whatever work might be found and consequently neglect the responsibility of properly rearing their young. Parents and children are often forced to desert their tahanan – literally a place where a family stays and where the young ideally are cared for. Parents leave a tahanan for their jobs and the children – effectively parentless – make do with a house, a bahay which is a poor substitute for a tahanan.

Without quality parents, no responsible citizenry can be expected. The logic is relentless and embraces human resource development in other contexts. The attrition of competent, dedicated teachers dooms any prospect for the functional education of the nation’s students. Minus this critical combination of tahanan and paaralan education, it is irrational to anticipate that there will be enough workers with the appropriate work ethics and entrepreneurs with the requisite risk-taking propensities. Make-do workers and crony-oriented capitalists are more predictable outcomes in systems that neglect decent parenting and competent education.

Without a properly demanding citizenry, one that exacts accountability of itself and those who are its authorities, how can an effective, patriotic leadership emerge? Or, if somehow such a leadership in some freaklish way came about, how can it possibly sustain itself? No way, absolutely no way.

With the passing of time, a critical mass of quality parents and an equally vital core of functional educators have suffered dangerous attrition. This handicap aborts any chance a society might have to develop a working democracy. A national strategy must now be forged on how to conserve and rapidly augment these endangered species of nurturing parents and educating teachers. Conscientiously implemented, this strategy will assure Filipinos of at least one thing. By 2050, there will be markedly fewer occasions for being traumatized in assessing their presidents/prime ministers, legislators, cabinet officials and other members of the political glitterati.

In 2050, Filipinos attending a legislative session may not need to miss Diokno, Laurel, Recto and Salonga all that painfully. In Malacañang, no one will be haranguing about I.Q.’s and charisma will remain Greek to its bona fide Filipino tenants. The Age of the Preposterous will have become ancient history and only masochistic academics will be interested in resurrecting those dark and trying times.

This is really a fairly safe prediction to make. One only has to assume that in 2002 or thereabouts, enough Filipinos seriously do something about conserving their best parents and teachers, move to quickly enhance their numbers and ultimately organize them into a modern Katipunan. Enlightened, patriotic PTA’s (parent-teachers associations) could be more reliable democratic partnerships than those which authorities of the church and the state have so far conspired to put together.